


Loyalty

by a_t_rain



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Coming of Age, Family, Gen, Jackson's Whole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-12
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-08 17:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4314537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_t_rain/pseuds/a_t_rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rish grows up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loyalty

Rish is four when the loyalty treatments begin. Her sisters say it won’t hurt, and it doesn’t. It’s a hypospray, like they sometimes get when they have vaccinations, and afterward Mama spends the whole afternoon with _her and only her_. After her first treatment, they go to the Experimental Zoo, and Rish gets to ride a miniature unicorn and feed the woolly mammoth a carrot (which it takes very delicately in its trunk) and gape wide-eyed at the pixiu, glad that it is safely on the other side of the glass. But Mama wrinkles her nose and makes a comment about how smelly the zoo is, and Rish, who wasn’t bothered by it before, has to agree.

After the second treatment, Mama asks what she wants to do, and Rish asks if she can just stay home and play dress-up with Mama’s clothes. Mama is _delighted_. She even puts on a silly hat and tries to play dress-up herself, which Rish finds very funny because Mama doesn’t usually play games and isn’t ever silly. And she lets Rish paint her fingernails pink, although she says Rish should always remember that she’s beautiful the way she is, and she won’t ever _need_ nail polish or cosmetics.

* * *

Rish is eight when Mama and Dada announce that a new child will be joining their family. She is not very pleased about the prospect at first. She is _accustomed_ to being the youngest, and besides, the new baby will be another evensister. Even _brothers_ are all right; Amiri is her constant companion and playmate, and Erik is already a teenager, and Rish finds him fascinating when he bothers to notice her. Pidge and Star, at eleven and twelve, can be _mean_.

But when the new baby comes out of the replicator, she isn’t beautiful like Star and Pidge. She is very red, and a little squashy-looking, with almost no hair. Dada, however, is obviously pleased with their new sister; he says this is how most natural babies look at first. He shows Rish how to hold her, and the baby grips her finger with a tiny, perfectly formed hand, and Rish thinks it might be nice being someone’s big sister, after all.

A year later there is another new baby, a brother this time, and this is even better because he will be one of _them_. He has sweet little pointed ears just like his oddsisters, and a slim, tapering body that is visibly different from Tej’s infant plumpness; he will be a dancer almost as soon as he can walk. She and Em and Pearl and Topaz and Ruby crowd around the cradle, all trying to touch him and pet him at once. She feels _complete_ , suddenly, even though she hadn’t known before that anything was missing.

But sometimes she envies Tej, because Dada doesn’t seem to be expecting her to _be anything_ , just to _be_.

* * *

Rish is fourteen when she starts sharing biology lessons with Em and Amiri. Amiri is _advanced_ and has been moved up to the same class as Em, and Mama – who is Baronne Cordonah, now – thinks it best to put Rish in with them and see how she does, since she is less than a year younger than Amiri and it’s more efficient for Dr. Khalid to give lessons to three people than two.

Rish isn’t as fascinated with the virtual dissection holos as Amiri is, but she can keep up, and at first she likes Dr. Khalid, who comes from Earth and teaches them all about the animals there. But then she shows them a vid about baby birds and imprinting, and Amiri starts saying “Quack quack” whenever he argues with Rish and Em about any of the Baronne’s decisions, and Dr. Khalid keeps coming back to the subject of imprinting as if she were really trying to make a point about something else, and Rish starts to feel uncomfortable.

Dr. Khalid says it’s not good for birds to imprint on humans because they won’t be able to pair-bond with their mates, later in life. She says this as if she thinks it has some sort of _significance_ , which it doesn’t, and anyway Rish wouldn’t care if it did, since she isn’t boy-crazy like Pearl, or, for that matter, girl-crazy like Em. (Besides, the _fact_ that Pearl and Em are like that proves that Dr. Khalid is wrong, doesn’t it?)

Rish notices some other things: Dr. Khalid makes them write essays about human genetic engineering – not just how it’s done, which is a reasonable topic for a biology class, but about what they think of the ethics of it. Amiri asks Dr. Khalid what _she_ thinks about the topic, and she won’t say, but she gives him the sort of look that might mean _ask me again in private_. She and Amiri have been spending a lot of time together in her research lab, and Rish doubts that they’re always doing experiments together. Of course they might be doing something entirely innocent, like having sex, but Rish doesn’t think so. (Dr. Khalid is _old_ , at least forty, and she hasn’t even had any modifications to make herself look younger.)

So she tells the Baronne about it. The Baronne’s expression is unreadable, but she says “Thank you for letting me know,” and Rish thinks she probably had words with Dr. Khalid in private, because after that Dr. Khalid sticks to teaching _science_.

The next time Amiri says “Quack quack” to her, it’s not at all good-natured or teasing, and he follows it up with a _squeeeaaal_ like a pig.

Some months later, Dr. Khalid decides not to sign on for another year and goes back to Earth, but Amiri has already started to talk about maybe not coming back to Jackson’s Whole after he finishes medical school, and Rish feels as though the fabric of her family has been ripped even though she tried her best to stop it.

* * *

Rish is fifteen when they get the order to take the little ones and evacuate, making their way overland to House Fell’s shuttleport, and from there to Fell Station and the Hegen Hub and, eventually, to asylum on Earth with a friend of their grandmother’s. Amiri and Em are with her. Pidge and Star are safe, studying at off-world universities. She has no idea about the others.

They are accompanied by a couple of bodyguards and by Tej and Jet’s nanny, but those people are accustomed to waiting for orders from the Family rather than making decisions on their own. So it’s really the three teenagers who are in charge. It is no good expecting Amiri to turn his considerable intelligence to _practical_ matters, or expecting Em to have any sense at all, so Rish takes control of the money and the travel arrangements.

She dissuades Em from spending a ridiculous amount of money on a Pol-style sarong that she insists is a _disguise_ , and tells her youngest brother and sister that they are going on a ride and a visit, all by themselves, and it will be great fun, and when they go back home they can tell Dada and the Baronne all about their adventures. She remembers to stock up on snacks and storybooks and motion sickness tablets for the journey, and spends half an hour hunting for Tej’s stuffed bear after she leaves it in the ladies’ room at the shuttleport. The Baronne, she thinks, will be proud of her. If she ever knows.

It’s an overnight journey from the planet’s surface to the jump-station, and they will need to save all the money they can. Rish suggests bunking down in the shuttle’s cafe area, but Amiri points out that it will be easier to keep the little ones under control if they get cabins, and Rish has to admit this is a point. So she springs for two four-person cabins, the cheapest interior ones. Tej thinks it is all a grand adventure. She keeps swinging from the bar you’re supposed to use for hanging up your clothes, and popping in and out of the bathroom to see how tiny it is. Rish finally has to take her out for a walk so she can burn off some energy, and they stand at one of the windows in the observation lounge watching Jackson’s Whole disappear below them. Tej finds it thrilling. Rish feels like a plant torn out by the roots.

Luckily, Tej gets sleepy once the motion sickness tablets start to kick in. Rish carries her back to the cabin so they can bunk down early for the night.

“Is Ruby going to die if the Baronne dies?” Em whispers, after Tej has fallen asleep.

“I don’t know,” Rish whispers back. “She’s not quite finished with the treatments yet.” It takes twenty years to make someone a jeeves, and Ruby is still a few months shy of her twenty-fourth birthday. Amiri might know the answer, but this is exactly the sort of question Rish doesn’t like to ask Amiri any more.

“I wish I were finished with mine,” says Em. “I don’t _want_ to live if the Baronne dies, do you?”

Rish isn’t quite sure if Em really means it or if she’s exaggerating, because this is exactly the sort of thing they compete over, who can be the most loyal. She doesn’t say anything in reply, because she knows if _she_ said it she wouldn’t mean it, not yet. She thinks, at first, that it isn’t a fair competition when Em is two years older, and then she realizes she doesn’t even really want to be two years older if this is what it means, and _damn_ Dr. Khalid for making her _think_ about this sort of stuff, anyway.

* * *

She has never seen the Baronne cry before, and it feels so _wrong_ , as wrong as leaving their home felt in the first place. It is as if they have not come back, after all, but instead found themselves in some strange new place that is almost, but not quite, the same as home.

“My dear ones,” said the Baronne, “I thought I might never see you again.”

It’s almost in the same breath that she tells them she’s stopping their loyalty treatments, and Rish figures, at first, that she’s in shock and doesn’t really mean what she’s saying. Jet starts to cry because he liked the bonding sessions after the treatments, and he doesn’t stop until the Baronne pulls him close and promises that they can still spend the occasional afternoon together, just him and her.

“But I can’t do that to you,” she says to the others, looking over Jet’s head. “I don’t want my Jewels to suffer after I’m gone.”

They look at one another. Rish feels a little like Jet, as if something she had been _counting_ on has been withdrawn from her, and judging from the expressions on her sisters’ faces, they are feeling the same way. _Didn’t you tell us it was a gift? Isn’t it one of the things that makes us special?_

And then she thinks: _What’s to stop one of us from deciding she wants to leave forever, like Amiri? What if all of us decide that’s what we want to do? You’re making a mistake._ She suppresses the thought, hard, because of course the Baronne doesn’t make mistakes. Except – if _this_ isn’t a mistake, then her decision to make her created children into jeeveses has to have been an even bigger mistake, so any way you look at it, the Baronne’s judgment is _fallible_ in ways Rish has never perceived it as fallible before. Maybe the treatments she’s already had are _wearing off_. She longs for the comfort of the hypospray, and certainty.

* * *

The Jewels hold a meeting of sorts afterwards, in their dance studio. Jet is too little to understand most of what his sisters are saying, but it’s tacitly understood that he ought to be present; it’s _his_ future that has just changed the most.

“You realize,” says Pearl, “that we might not ever be able to _trust_ him as much as we trust each other.”

The others start looking at Jet with a bit of suspicion, and then Rish realizes Ruby is also looking at _her_ that way, so she says “ _Stop_ that.”

Ruby shrugs. “It’s nothing personal. Just, you know, you’re not completely grown up yet. Neither is Em, for that matter.”

This is true; they will never catch up, never be the almost-jeeves that Ruby is. This has suddenly become a rigged competition, one the younger ones can’t win. The Baron always says that if you find yourself in that situation, you rewrite the rules.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Em, rewriting the rules. “We can be just as loyal as you. It’s a _choice_.”

Rish backs her up, although in the back of her mind she’s thinking that the problem with choices is that people can always turn around and make different ones. “Maybe it’s better if it’s a choice. It’s like the Baronne said, she wants us to have our freedom.” (Granted, the Baronne has said a lot of things in the last hour, some of which sounded like she was talking completely at random, and there were a few moments when Rish actually suspected their mother might be drunk. But right now she needs to demonstrate that she is still a loyal daughter, so throwing in a quotation from the Baronne can’t hurt.) “And it’s more _meaningful_ this way.” (This is another one of the Baron’s maxims: figure out a way to spin your weaknesses as strengths.)

Ruby concedes the point, somewhat ungraciously, since no one in the family has ever liked losing at anything.

“We’re going to have to stick together, _that’s_ all,” says Topaz. “It doesn’t change who we are to each other.”

The others look at Topaz with relief, and everyone nods. They _belong_ with each other; this much is solid and certain, whatever else may have just happened to their world.

Rish picks up Jet, who has been looking at them all in wide-eyed puzzlement. “Don’t worry, sweetling. Everything is going to be just fine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Edited to age down the older children. I'd been assuming age gaps of a year or two between each child, but this is not necessary with replicators, and I realized that it leads to timeline problems, since Shiv and Udine met during the invasion of Komarr, and we're told in WA that this was only about six years before Miles was born. Thus, Erik is probably no more than around forty at the time of CVA, when Rish is thirty-four. (Ruby, however, could have been in the picture _before_ Udine met Shiv, and for the purposes of this 'verse, she was.)


End file.
